#spatial humanities

[scholarlyvision]

[scholarlyvision]

The Decolonial Atlas is a fantastic collection of maps and information about different ways of presenting the world. Well worth a browse.

[brianrgutierrez]

Description: Lloyd's Subscription Room

Date: 1809

Source: Pyne, William Henry; Combe, William (1904) [1809] "Lloyd's" in The Microcosm of London or London in Miniature, Volume II, London: Methuen and Company, pp. Plate 49.

Creator(s):Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) and Augustus Charles Pugin (1762–1832) (after) John Bluck (fl. 1791–1819), Joseph Constantine Stadler (fl. 1780–1812), Thomas Sutherland (1785–1838), J. Hill, and Harraden (aquatint engravers)[1] [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

[jrlittle]

Historic Durham Drive-Ins

I'm preparing a workshop for teaching Google Fusion Tables to a group of writing students learning about Spatial Humanities.  Fusion Tables is an ideal tool for the assignment.  The amount of data required is low (10 to 20 items), the tool host, Google (or Google Drive), is familiar.  Terms like "geocoding" or "geolocating" may be a new concept for the students but locating objects on a map will be well understood.  

In preparation, I created this example Fusion Table from sources across the Web.  The table shows the location of the 8-9 drive-in theaters which once existed in Durham, NC.  All the theaters are now closed, some are abandoned but still exist, others have long been paved-over and cultivated for new uses.  

Geolocating these old drive-in locations demonstrate many stories. Among them, we can imply, visually, the growth of a city.  It's important to understand that Drive-in theaters would have been intentionally placed "out in the country," in a rural settings.  Years later, seeing those same locations displayed on a current map, we can demonstrate how rural landscapes are retooled into suburban and exurban landscapes.

Additionally, the historic information is sparse.  By visually representing the information we found -- and documented in the "about this table" section -- we can comment about name changes and validity of surviving information. For example we can suggest the Forest Drive-In and the Skyview Drive-In may have actually been the same place; it may have gone through a name change over the years.  By locating and providing citations for the theaters we are able to document what seems to be an unlikely proximity of the two theaters.  This proximity may have been harder to tease out without the aid of geolocating the points as part of the spatial humanities toolset. Furthermore, in our historical analysis we may choose to identify this unlikely proximity issue.  Could this be one location with a name change, or is it two locations?

As noted, citations for supporting information of this project can be placed inside the "About this Table" section visible by description at the top of the fusion tables page.  Other features include the ability to use special Icons to represent the unique features, in this case theaters.

[arwensabendstern]

Historians, literary theorists, archeologists and other academics are using advanced technology to establish a novel field that they are tentatively calling “spatial humanities.” These scholars use software that can display and analyze information related to a physical location to re-examine real or fictional places in new ways.

Examples of Spatial Humanities Projects - Map - NYTimes.com

[poptech]

Few battles in history have been more scrutinized than Gettysburg’s three blood-soaked days in July 1863, the turning point in the Civil War. Still, there were questions that all the diaries, official reports and correspondence couldn’t answer precisely. What, for example, could Gen. Robert E. Lee actually see when he issued a series of fateful orders that turned the tide against the Confederate Army nearly 150 years ago?

Now historians have a new tool that can help. Advanced technology similar to Google Earth, MapQuest and the GPS systems used in millions of cars has made it possible to recreate a vanished landscape. This new generation of digital maps has given rise to an academic field known as spatial humanities. Historians, literary theorists, archaeologists and others are using Geographic Information Systems — software that displays and analyzes information related to a physical location — to re-examine real and fictional places like the villages around Salem, Mass., at the time of the witch trials; the Dust Bowl region devastated during the Great Depression; and the Eastcheap taverns where Shakespeare’s Falstaff and Prince Hal caroused.

Like the crew on the starship Enterprise, humanists are exploring a new frontier of the scholarly universe: space.

“Mapping spatial information reveals part of human history that otherwise we couldn’t possibly know,” saidAnne Kelly Knowles, a geographer at Middlebury College in Vermont. “It enables you to see patterns and information that are literally invisible.” It adds layers of information to a map that can be added or taken off at will in various combinations; the same location can also be viewed back and forth over time at the click of a mouse.